Bcheek’s IM Fusion 10 mixed reef office tank

[ForrestGump]

Looks great!

 

[Bcheek]

Weekly update:
I was sick Monday and Tuesday, so I didn’t get to check in with the tank after the weekend like usual. Thankfully I had added water to the ato reservoir before leaving work on Friday, so everything was fine. I won Triquatics’ January contest for algae barn 5280 pods+ Ocean magik phytoplankton which should be arriving next week. Should be cool to increase the diversity of my pod population.

I glued down the favia and the duncan today, and they are still a little closed up but should be fine by Monday when I get back to the office. I’m hoping to pick up some more corals this weekend either from the Unique Corals LiveSale or the LFS. Im hoping to find a porcelain or Pom Pom crab this weekend too.

 

[Bcheek]

New arrivals:
More zoas that have some purple/yellow coloring
Purple/green birdsnest
Orange/red monti cap
GSP
Bluish Goniopora

Got these from the Unique Corals LiveSale this weekend. Everything except the GSP started to open up right away.
I need to find some sort of small frag rack so I don’t have to worry about crabs digging these plugs out of the sand.

 

[Bcheek]

Everything seems to be settling in nicely, mounted the Goni, new zoas, and the gsp on Friday. Tentatively planning on letting the GSP take over the back wall. Im not happy with where the favia is currently so I’ll probably bust that off and find somewhere else for it, and may put the monti cap there. The birdsnest will probably move up to the top left.

The zoas are multiplying pretty quickly so I’m not going to touch the lighting. Currently running 60% 20k from 7:30-6:30 with a 1 hour ramp up and 1 hour ramp down.

I’ve got some more zoas, an acan frag, and a chalice coming later this week. After those arrive I won’t be adding much else for a while, unless I run across a torch locally that grabs me.

New FTS 2/25

 

[Bcheek]

The skirts on these zoas are finally starting to recover after they got really badly squashed when I trimmed down the frag plug. Can’t wait until they fill in the gaps, but they’re already a really great looking morph.

 

[Bcheek]

Top down shot during water change today. Last weeks new arrivals didn’t fare too well due to a shipping delay. The acan frag didn’t make it, the chalice lost most of its color and tissue, one of the zoas has melted down to two polyps from about a dozen, and the other frag hasn’t opened up yet but at least hasn’t lost any tissue that I can see. The existing residents are doing pretty well, and all have noticeable growth so I can’t be too upset. Tank is at the 2 month mark tomorrow, and I may look at fish this week.

 

[reef-rc]

Noticed you mentioned shipping delay last week. Ditto on my end too - 48 hrs. I may have lost 40%-50% of the shipment due to mechanical failure with the carrier. I am just waiting till late this week before calling it and getting credit back on items lost as a result.

 

[Bcheek]

Noticed you mentioned shipping delay last week. Ditto on my end too - 48 hrs. I may have lost 40%-50% of the shipment due to mechanical failure with the carrier. I am just waiting till late this week before calling it and getting credit back on items lost as a result.

That stinks :/ ill be getting credit back for the dead stuff too. just bizarre since it was shipping from in state so there really wasn’t any excuse for it to be delayed

 

[Bcheek]

FTS Friday 3/8

Mounted the monti and birdsnest frags today, might make it to the LFS tomorrow

 

[Bcheek]

Changed up the scape a little bit to get more real estate, and got some new arrivals yesterday. Found my red mithrax munching on the new chalice so I’ve gotta get him out of there tomorrow and bring him back to the LFS (hopefully to be traded in towards a porcelain crab). In the meantime I put some algae strips in the tank for him to distract from the corals. Everything is a little angry in this photo because I had my hands in the tank and too much manhandling frags off of their plugs. Hopefully everyone will be fully open tomorrow for some individual shots.
Maxi mini
Utter chaos zoa
Toxic wowsers
Super Avocado zoa
Alien monster chalice
Mystery freebie zoa

 

[Bcheek]

Well good news bad news with the red mithrax:
The Good: I got him out of the display by luring with an algae pellet and snatching him with some chopsticks.
The Bad: He slipped out of the chopsticks and now lives in the third back chamber. It'll be a nightmare to get him out of there so I'll wait to try until next month when i take out the pump/heater to clean ;Dead

 

[Devaji]

nice little tank! office tanks are cool if I worked in out I sooo would do one as well

 

[Bcheek]

nice little tank! office tanks are cool if I worked in out I sooo would do one as well

I don’t have any windows in my office so this is a great substitute, and a good excuse to waste a little time mid day

 

[Bcheek]

Added two little clowns today, they’re eating great already. I’m thinking I might put together an algae reactor for this tank if the nutrients start getting too high. Water changes bigger than 1g a day are hard to do logistically because this isn’t at home so I have to transport water. I also just think the reactors are cool, but could always go with a skimmer instead TBD.

The maxi mini moved off the top of the rock structure and has some bleaching so I’m guessing the light was too bright for it. It hasn’t gotten worse since yesterday and looks minor so I’m not too concerned yet.

 

[reef-rc]

those anemones do have a mind of their own for sure. It'll acclimate over time if given a chance. overtime if it doesn't get enough light, I know mine moves to a better location for more light and flows it like. I have 3 maxi in my Evo.

btw - maxi doappreciate weekly feeding; it'll light take more if you feed more often. i know mine will take anything. these days I feed the fish right over 2 of the mini maxi and if food drops, the maxi will clean up what the fish does not catch.

 

[Bcheek]

I think I’m going to change my lighting schedule a little bit to include some morning time in the 12k spectrum. I like it almost as much as the 20k but it looks more natural and is easier to photograph. Tomorrow I’m going to scrape the back wall and do a small water change. The corals all seem to be enjoying the extra nutrients from the clowns, and the duncan is finally back to opening up all the way.

Trying to decide what corals to get to go on the highest rock since the maxi mini doesn’t want light that intense. My two sps frags are growing pretty well, but the tank is almost 3 months so it’s probably too early for other non monti/birdsnest types. I’m keeping an eye out for some acans or other LPS for the bottom right section.

 

[Bcheek]

Things are still running pretty well, but I’m still recovering from a return pump blowout last month where the wires somehow became exposed and I had active current in the tank. Just got in a new order this week for the first time in 2020 with some new zoas, a mushroom, and a new monti. One of my clowns disappeared a few months back without a trace. Getting pretty good growth from my Monti, but not expecting my Duncan to recover.

FTS 10/2/2020

 

[Bcheek]

Moved my tank home from the office a week or two ago since I’m going on paternity leave late next month. Only a couple losses from the move: utter chaos melted within a few days, my monti started bleaching but I managed to break off a healthy section which is recovering and already starting to re-grow. Everything else handled the move just fine which is nice.

one of my astrea snails has a pretty cool feather duster growing out of its shell. I think my hermits killed the rest.

It’s been fun having it at home and being able to share with my daughter (3yrs) who loves everything about it. Hoping I can leverage that interest into setting up a ~75g system

 

[Bcheek]

looking at getting either a reefer 250 or 350 over the holidays unless water box has a better sale.

these zoas are recovering great, after the stray voltage these were down to one tiny no color polyp

I’ve had this RFA for over a year and it hasn’t really grown much until the last month since I’ve been doing 2x feedings of reef roids a week

I got these in April of 2019 as a single polyp

the frogspawn is starting to look like a frogspawn again and is getting a bunch of new tentacles. I thought I was going to lose this frag for a while but now it’s growing fast